Tips For Pacing The Royal Parks Half Marathon

Written on 11 October 2018.

Nick Harris-Fry

Tuesday, October 9, 2018 - 09:45

The key to a strong race at any distance is good, consistent training – but even if you have logged months of quality preparation, it’s still possible for your big day to go awry if you don’t pace your race sensibly.

If you’ve entered the Royal Parks Half Marathon on 14th October, you’ll probably have been told several times not to go out too fast. It’s the most clichéd piece of running advice going, but no less correct for that fact.

Moving beyond that basic advice you might also have been told that running a negative split is a wise race strategy. For more information on what that means, plus other key pacing tips, we spoke to ON Running Coach Andy Hobdell.

What is a negative split and why is it a good strategy for a half marathon?

It means running the second half of the race faster than the first half of the race. A classic example of this is Eliud Kipchoge’s recent world record [2hr 1min 39sec] for the marathon in Berlin, where he ran the first half marathon in 61min 6sec and then the second half in 60min 33sec. His 30 to 35km split was his fastest of the entire race.

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